SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 2024
Olav Albuquerque
Drugs has emerged as a pillar of Goa’s economy because like the ubiquitous casinos, it is synonymous with tourism. Domestic and foreign tourists flock to Goa to splurge their money on gambling and drugs routed to some politicians through a complex network of companies involved in property, mining and casinos. At least, a part of these slush funds may be used for campaigning during elections which is understood but never spoken about.
Breaking this vicious cycle is impossible because the police act as the tools of the ministers. The police officers in Goa will be promoted only if they obey their ministers, though the law mandates they obey their direct superiors. Whispers that a former chief minister’s son was involved in drug-peddling leading to the 2008 murder of Scarlett Keeling abound. The police made Keeling’s mother, Fiona MacKeown, a scapegoat for allegedly allowing her minor daughter to stay back in Goa alone which culminated in a 10-year-jail term for one culprit.
To ensure justice, we have to amend the Narcotics, Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985 to ensure a panel which selects the CBI chief on merit-cum-seniority also selects the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) chief. Like the CBI chief, those who head the NCB in the 29 States should be guaranteed a minimum tenure with a salary and pension on the lines of the judiciary. They should be made accountable only to the courts for their conviction rate and confirmation in their jobs. Unless this is done, some Nigerian, Russian or Israeli cartels will thrive along Goa’s coastal belt.
The hippies discovered Goa in the 1970s, and used LSD to experience nirvana via the godmen, some of whom went to the USA to spread their philosophy. One such godman was deported from Oregon in the USA and returned to Pune to peddle his philosophy. The hippies slowly died out in Goa after 30 years but these godmen thrived with funds from Bollywood and Tollywood to demonise the minority in Goa. Our ministers use religion as an opium to incite the majority against the minority.
This is proved recently by another former chief minister who has claimed that God told him to defect. This stalwart, who has a corruption case against him, returned from Delhi, where he was probably offered a ministerial berth. For God speaks to those who swear before Him not to defect if elected but renege on their oaths after being selected by the voters. The protests outside these eight MLAs’ houses to be staged by a local political party will not reverse their decisions because the police will protect them.
Democracy is mobocracy in disguise for votes can be poached. Like a notorious drug-peddler, known to be close to a minister, who allegedly paid off those who burnt alive an RTI activist, Vilas Mether, in Salvador-do-Mundo in 2020. Mether used the RTI to expose a local builder.
The local police act as an extended arm of the minister which is why corrupt policemen are promoted in Goa, in deference to their pliability to the ministers.
The fact that the police are forced to arrest only small-time peddlers from the coastal belt of Anjuna-Calangute-Baga-Vagator-Siolim is proved when some PSIs who could not probe simple cheating cases were posted in the sensitive narcotics cell of the Goa Police. A former magistrate, now a sessions judge, issued an arrest warrant against a PSI who refused to appear before her when summoned in Mapusa. He had diluted a land-grabbing case. Shockingly, the government has overlooked these arrest warrants to promote this delinquent PSI as a police inspector who was in-charge of the Agasaim police station.
Another top IPS officer was accused of demanding Rs 5,00,000 from a Vasco-based businessman in 2016 to register an FIR at Ponda. The businessman alleged this at a press conference but was later brutally attacked. The former chief secretary, who headed the vigilance, allegedly was ‘soft’ on this IPS officer who was only transferred. Like ex-minister from the North who declared in 2017 he had stopped his walks along the beach because the drug-peddlers would murder him. He claimed that journos who expose the minister-drug peddler-police nexus will be bumped off. The former minister said he refused police protection from his then chief minister, who succumbed to illness, because he was the first minister to speak out against drugs. This may have cost him votes in the last election.
(Olav Albuquerque holds a PhD in law and is a senior journalist-cum-advocate of the Bombay High Court)
